The Rogue Retrieval (20 page)

“Like Valteron?”

Moric smiled. “We don't need to worry about Valteron, as long as I'm on the council.”

“Because you're friends with Richard Holt.”

“Something like that,” Moric said.

Quinn laughed, suddenly nervous. “You didn't, ah, have anything to do with his rise to power, did you?”

Moric did not answer.

 

“Alissians have much to teach us about loyalty.”

—­
R
.
H
OLT,
“U
NDERSTANDING
A
LISS
IAN
E
THICS
”

CHAPTER 18

CONFRONTATIONS

L
ogan was in a dark place. The faces of the dead Bravo Team members played over and over in his head. He'd been a soldier for all his adult life. He'd lost brothers before. But when you recruited and trained them yourself, you felt more than just a loss. You felt the guilt. It was just as bad as that shit-­storm in Caralis years ago.

No—­worse.

Kiara motioned for him to scout ahead. The isotope signal had remained strong. They were in Landor still, though closer to the Felaran border. That made everyone nervous; it seemed their quarry had given up all pretense and were making a straight shot back toward the gateway.

Now, suddenly, the source of the isotope had gone still. If Bravo's last surviving member was tracking the infiltrators, it meant they'd stopped somewhere. Maybe to set an ambush. Kiara had ordered silence on the comm units; the raiders might be listening in. One of the fallen men had been missing his earbud.

Logan dismounted and slipped forward for a look over the ridge ahead. He rested a hand on the stock of the MP5. Bravo Team had managed to put them on close-­to-­equal terms with the raiders, though at great cost. She and Logan had the guns; Chaudri now carried Logan's crossbow.

Kiara estimated the signal was about a quarter mile ahead. As he looked now, he could make out a dense cluster of evergreens on a rocky outcropping.
Distance looks about right, too.
It was slightly uphill from his position, and his field glasses couldn't penetrate much into the dense wall of trees. Anyone hidden there, however, had a view for miles around. He scooted down the ridge and jogged back to confer with the others.

“Are they up there?” Kiara asked.

“That's where I'd be,” he said. “You could hide a small army in those trees, and they have good visibility. There's no way we'll approach without being seen. In daylight, at least.”

“What if they have night-­vision equipment?” Chaudri asked.

“Then we're at a major disadvantage,” Logan admitted. He hoped they wouldn't have it, though. That kind of gear was heavy, and they'd had no reason to suspect they'd need it when they raided the island facility.

“We'd better proceed as if they do,” Kiara said. “It's about four hours until nightfall. As long as they stay here, we'll hit them tonight.”

They gave the horses their feed bags to keep them quiet, and began to draw up a plan.

L
ogan hid behind a boulder twenty yards south of the tree line. It was almost midnight. They'd seen no movement in the evergreens before darkness fell, other than a thin curl of smoke. Someone had built a campfire. He doubted it was Mendez; the scout wouldn't risk revealing his position. Either the remaining raiders had grown lax, or they meant to lure someone in.

Kiara was working in from the east, to try for a better fix on the isotope scanner. Chaudri had taken a position to the west, fifty yards from the trees. She wouldn't move in unless called; her job was to make sure that no one slipped away north or west. Logan had found a suppressor on one of the bodies in the defile; he screwed it into the muzzle of his MP5 now. It would hide a muzzle flash and muffle the sound, but cut the effective range of the weapon considerably. If he used it, he'd better be close.

Which he damn well intended to be.

A tiny signal flashed to his right. Their beacons were small LEDs, matched to the fluorescent green of the Alissian firefly. From a distance, it was hard to tell the difference, except that these flashes happened to be Morse code. She had a fix just inside the wood line. Thirty yards. He sent back three dashes, then dash-­dot-­dash.
OK.
A cloud drifted in front of the Alissian moon; the wind provided some cover noise. He rose and sprinted for the trees.

Fifteen yards, ten yards, five. He rolled in under the foliage of the evergreens. The mat of fallen needles made no sound. He came up into a crouch, MP5 at the ready. No movement. Mendez shouldn't be far in. He might be asleep, or unconscious. Kiara flashed an update. Ten yards. He crept forward, closing the distance. Something clicked ahead. Logan tensed. It was a cigarette lighter; the man was lighting up.

“Hey!” Logan whispered. “Mendez!”

The man paused. He looked over, clicked the lighter again. Then Logan realized something.

Mendez didn't smoke.

The cigarette had been a distraction. With his other hand, he'd raised the dark shadow of a handgun.

Shit!

Logan dove over and down as the suppressed muzzle spat bullets at him. He rolled prone behind a fallen tree. The man was up and walking toward him. He was wearing a powder-­blue jumpsuit. He fired again, splintering the wood in front of Logan's face. And he kept coming.

Logan lifted the muzzle of the MP5 just over the wood. The man reared back in surprise, trying to scramble away.
I guess he didn't expect to face a gun.
Logan didn't take any chances. He aimed for center mass and put four in the man's chest. He was dead before he hit the ground. Logan stood and hurried forward, still covering him with the MP5. The fallen cigarette smoldered in the leaves. He stamped it out, then rolled the man over.

“This is interesting,” he whispered.

“What?” Kiara's voice asked.

“It
is
the goddamn janitor.”

A
hundred yards to the east, Kiara watched Logan sneak into the woods. She had the isotope scanner trained on a source just inside the wood line. Presumably that was Mendez, hiding in the deep cover. Hopefully he hadn't come this far just to bleed out. It was critical that Logan reach the last member of Bravo Team alive. Not only would he have priceless intel on the infiltrators and their movements, but his survival would offer some consolation, some payoff, for the lives taken from the other three.

Logan had been trying his best not to show it, but their deaths had hit him hard. Yes, he was a professional soldier; he'd seen killing before. But it didn't stop these things from hurting. It just meant he covered his emotions. He focused on the task at hand.

And the moment he got close to those responsible, he'd be like a tiger off the leash.

She'd specifically ordered him to try to take one of them alive, but that was unlikely to happen. Not that Logan wasn't capable. He was a brawler and always had been, from the day she'd recruited him out of the ser­vice. But losing soldiers under your command was the most devastating thing that could happen to an officer. These were men and women you trained, gave orders to, felt
responsible
for.

On a mission, no one obsessed more about security than Logan did. Half of the equipment that the prototyping lab designed for Alissian use—­such as the perimeter stakes—­were things that he had dreamed up. None of it had saved Bravo from the raiders. Logan would kill them to a man if she let him.

And he might even if she
didn't
let him.

They'd cross that bridge if and when they came to it, though. For now, Kiara scanned the tree line for any hint of movement. As she did, she reconsidered their tactical options. Judging by the curl of smoke they'd seen earlier, the raiders had made their camp another few hundred yards north. They were surrounded by dense forest on three sides, and a rocky drop-­off to the north. It was a fairly defensible position, with the advantage of elevation and visibility. Two or three raiders remained, and they'd proven themselves dangerous.

She looked back to Logan just in time to see the gunfire.
Christ! What's going on?
She heard a faint sound, like the
pfft-­pfft
of a silenced handgun. The suppressor covered most of the flash, but not all of it. A moment later came the soft putts of Logan's MP5. She cursed and ran for the woods, praying that Logan wouldn't accidentally shoot her.

C
haudri crouched in the long grass to the west of the wooded outcrop. The stock of Logan's crossbow felt clumsy and uncomfortable in her hands. She tried her best to concentrate on the mission and her orders, but there were so many distractions. She'd spent the better part of her career studying Alissia. Poring over manuscripts, reading reports, studying maps and histories. The prospect of an entire new world, one for which new data were constantly pouring in, thrilled her as nothing in archaeology had. And Richard Holt had inspired her as no one else could. He didn't just read about something to study it. He inserted himself into the experiment. Studied it inside and out. Almost got married, just to understand what it was like.

Meeting him in the palace of the Valteroni Prime . . . that had been something. Holt had been as confident and calm as ever. He showed no remorse for what he'd done; if anything, he was even more self-­assured. Chaudri was beginning to understand why. There was an
enchantment
to this place. Even now, when she placed her palm against the hard, rocky earth, she imagined she could feel its pulse.

Movement from the trees broke her out of her reverie. A man hurried through the woods, south toward Logan's position. No, two men. It looked like they were carrying machine guns, and moonlight glinted off of some gear on their heads.

Are those night-­vision goggles?

Chaudri reached for her comm unit, but remembered that Kiara had confiscated it. Knew she'd be tempted. If she could get close enough, she might be able to warn them with the flash signal. Her Morse code was a bit rusty, though; she began running through it, just in case.

Kiara hadn't really told her what to do in this situation. Her job was to watch and report if men fled.
How I'm supposed to do that without a comm is still beyond me.
At this range, she wouldn't be able to hit either man with the crossbow, so she was useless. She started working her way south, keeping behind the grass or bushes whenever she could. Shadowing the men in black clothing. Her boot snapped a dry twig; the noise seemed to echo in the night air. She froze. The men in the woods paused. They'd heard it, of course.

Will they come this way?
That was the real question.

If they did, she gave herself very little chance of killing them both. The crossbow would give her a good chance at one, but the second man probably wouldn't come within sword range.

Then again, it had slowed them, which gave her an idea. She shadowed their movements for another few minutes, then found a stone and hurled it into the woods behind them. They certainly heard that. Both of them crouched low, half turned to look for a threat behind them. Chaudri remained completely still. In low visibility, movement gave away more than anything else. She was a stump, or a stone. Nothing more.

At last they moved on, and faster than before. Some urgency drove whatever they planned. Chaudri nearly had to run to keep up with them. She came to a ditch running east-­west. It would give her enough cover to get near the tree line, and the raiders were already past it. She'd have to be closer to be useful to Logan and Kiara anyway.

She cut left, trying to keep low. Gods, but she hoped they wouldn't turn around. The crossbow was getting heavy.

L
ogan crawled on his belly under the branches of evergreens, working his way toward the enemy camp. He hadn't lingered near the dead janitor. If the other raiders had heard the gunfire, they'd be coming fast. The blue jumpsuit was another piece in the puzzle; it explained the isotope signal here and how the infiltrators had gotten past security and through the gateway. Security on the Earth-­side wasn't Logan's responsibility, but he saw how it could happen. Big company, lots of layers of security codes and scanners and such, but you need someone to clean up after closing time. Those trash cans didn't empty themselves. Janitors had access to almost everything. A well-­placed agent posing as a janitor could help himself to the files and reports undoubtedly left lying around.

Some of the smartest scientists in the world, and they don't know anything about information security.

The worst part was that it
hadn't
been Mendez. Bravo's scout would have really turned the tables on this mission. Logan and Kiara had been counting on the
intel
and the extra manpower. The idea that he might still be alive had kept Logan better in line. Who had he been kidding? The kid was probably dead, just like the rest of his team. Another awkward letter to send about an “unfortunate training accident.”

He probably should have retreated and regrouped with the others. More planning, more chasing. More bodies probably left behind as the raiders burned their path back toward the gateway. That's what Kiara would have wanted him to do. But now his blood was up, and there was no Mendez to save.

That only leaves one thing to do.

He paused for a moment to put on the infrared-­sensing lenses. They didn't help with seeing in the near-­darkness, but they'd give him a warning if the enemy had night-­vision equipment. The moon was enough for him. He edged toward the center of the woods as he went. Sixteen rounds in the clip, three of them spent on the janitor. That left thirteen. Would it be enough? He paused long enough to pull the clip and add three more rounds. No sense going into a fight without a full mag.

The clip slid back into place. He tried to muffle the sound when it seated, the soft metallic
click
. The wind died at the exact wrong moment. The click sounded too loud in the silent woods. He held completely still, listening, waiting. Good. He took a step forward.

Gunfire erupted from the left, from the shadowed woods. He dropped flat, but not in time to avoid a graze across the shoulder.
That was close.
He couldn't see the muzzle flashes—­the trees were too thick here. He scrabbled away on a diagonal. Bullets flew again. He was forced to take cover behind a tree. They had him pinned. More gunfire, now coming from the two positions. One to the left, one almost north of him. They were flanking him. He resisted the urge to shoot back; that would only give away his position and they had the drop on him already. He slouched low to the ground, putting the tree between him and the shooter on the north. He brought the stock of the MP5 to his shoulder and quieted his breathing.